Brands that were early adopters and first movers on platforms like Facebook and Twitter were able to stake out a position as thought-leaders and some were able to leverage that in order to drive business-building initiatives. Ethan McCarty: IBM has a long history of digital collaboration.

That’s what David Kiron of the MIT Management Review recently asked Jeff Schick, the vice president of social software at IBM, in the course of a lengthy interview. hr IBM Jeff Schick social business social tools the MIT Management Review

with IBM Connections. George and I both use IBM Connections. IBM Connections works somewhat like Facebook in that I invite people into my professional network. I am typing a question directly on Georges profile board in IBM Connections. with IBM Connection.

While most smartphones come with their own email and calendaring tools that most users will use, there are some third-party options worth considering: Gmail and Google Calendar. Cloud-based document collaboration tools need to include mobile access to be truly effective. Yammer’s a popular enterprise social networking tool that is very much like a private Facebook for the enterprise. IBM Lotus Connections. MORE >>

While it’s certainly premature to declare email — which turned 40 years old in 2011 — “dead” as a technology, it’s fair to acknowledge that a new generation of communication tools is gaining traction as a more effective means of communication for the enterprise. Over the past several years, the rise of social networking platforms like Facebook and Twitter have taken a lot of the conversations that once occurred on email to other channels on the consumer side. MORE >>

This means that the tools are quickly adopted, at least in the small group level. However, the more important side of this social tool innovation is that they are based on activity streams. To distinguish these modern business tools from earlier generations, I use the term “work media.” They share characteristics with well-known social media tools, but they are oriented toward getting work done. Open tools, closed data. MORE >>

It’s interesting to see the need to justify enterprise needs of such tools that are already being adopted by consumers, typical of enterprise settings ( I’m a former enterprise intranet manager ). List of Enterprise Microblogging Tools I’ll be making lots of updates to this post as comments come in. SocialCast A friendfeed and twitter tools for the enterprise, this has been covered by Webware. is a micro-update communications tool for your company. MORE >>

You may not realize it, but IBM has actually been a player in the enterprise social networking space for quite some time. It also supports a wider variety of mobile devices and integrates with other software to help further IBM’s vision of “social everywhere: the idea that social networks are more useful if users can access them any time, anywhere. Additionally, Connections is also being integrated with other software to enable social features within those tools. MORE >>